Congress Must End Washington’s Penalty on Prescription Pills

REALCLEARHEALTH

Washington has devised a strange way to encourage medical innovation: Punish researchers for developing medicines that are easier for patients to take.

That is the practical effect of the Inflation Reduction Act’s so-called “Pill Penalty.” Under the law, small-molecule medicines—commonly taken as pills or tablets—become subject to Medicare’s government price-setting program four years earlier than large-molecule biologic drugs. Small-molecule medicines receive only nine years before price controls can take effect, while biologics receive 13.

There is no scientific justification for this distinction. A medicine does not become less innovative, less valuable or less deserving of continued research simply because a patient can swallow it instead of receiving it through an injection or infusion. Yet Washington has created a powerful financial incentive to direct investment away from pills—even when a pill would be the best treatment for patients.

Congress can correct that mistake by passing the bipartisan Ensuring Pathways to Innovative Cures Act, or EPIC Act. Introduced in the House by Representatives Greg Murphy, Don Davis and Richard Hudson, with companion legislation in the Senate, the EPIC Act would give small-molecule medicines the same 13-year period that biologics receive before becoming eligible for government price setting.

This is not a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies. It is a necessary correction to a government-created distortion of the market.

Read more here.